Pskov court opposes New People – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

Pskov court opposes New People - Picture of the Day - Kommersant

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The Pskov City Court satisfied the claim of the Pskov Electoral Committee to invalidate its own decision to register the list of “New People” (ND) for elections to the City Duma. The reason for the removal of the list of the party was the allegedly unreliable signatures in the documents of a number of its candidates. The IPs themselves tried to present their own independent expertise to the court, and also pointed out the discrepancy between the Pskov legislation and the federal one, but their arguments had no effect. The party is preparing to file an appeal and is still campaigning.

The Pskov city court agreed with the claim of the territorial election commission, which asked to cancel its own decision to register the list of the New People party in the elections to the city Duma. After two inspections of documents for the nomination of candidates by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was found that the signatures of some members of the list were put in one hand, while, according to the law, each had to sign himself.

In this regard, 8 out of 15 possible territorial groups of the New People were removed from the elections, which led to the cancellation of registration and the entire party list.

The New People presented to the court alternative examinations made by specialists on their order, Oleg Zakharov, head of the party’s executive committee, told Kommersant.

According to him, the experts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (on whom the court relied) reported that they made examinations “from what they have,” that is, they did not have all the necessary information and materials. At the same time, the conclusions provided by the party unequivocally state that the signatures were made by each candidate independently.

In addition, the “New People” dispute the very norm of the law of the Pskov region in terms of subparagraph “l-1” of paragraph 9 of Art. 36 of the Electoral Code of the Pskov Region. According to it, a party participating in the elections must have at least half of all territorial groups on its list (after the court decision, the New People had an understaffing). The party believes that this norm does not comply with paragraph “l” of paragraph 25 of Article 38 of the 67th Federal Law, where a similar requirement is contained in relation to regional groups (they are only in regional elections), but not territorial ones. Thus, according to the NL, the law of the region contradicts the federal law and must be corrected.

Earlier party already managed to defend ten of their candidates, whom the TEC of Pskov tried to remove on similar grounds. Then the commission wanted to remove only certain members of the list, but the court sided with the IP. At the same time, the latter filed a counterclaim against the commission about its inaction in terms of not making a decision on candidates who were in the same territorial groups as those whose signatures were found to be unreliable. It was necessary to cancel the registration of the entire territorial group, since it cannot have less than two people, but the commission made decisions only on those candidates whose signatures were in doubt.

The IP now intends to appeal the court’s decision. In view of the fact that the latter has not entered into force, the party continues to campaign, hoping to remain on the ballots.

Inna Vetrenko, head of the Department of Social Technologies at the NZIU RANEPA, Doctor of Political Sciences, believes that litigation and administrative obstacles may be part of the planned IP campaign. “In general, history looks artificial. The “new people”, although a Duma party, does not have its own stable electorate, therefore it can act in elections according to the “grab everyone” principle. Perhaps they did not find anything on the internal agenda of the Pskov region for themselves and decided to play on oppression and opposition. But, I think, the Yabloko electorate does not threaten them, these are completely different electoral fields, ”the expert believes.

Oleg Dilimbetov, St. Petersburg

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